This Democracy thing

And so, a few weeks ago when I fired off my email to my local democratically elected representative raising my concerns about an upcoming change in the copyright legislation, I expected it to disappear into the void like so many job applications.

Only to receive a response ten minutes ago, informing me that my concerns, shared with many others, had been brought to the minister proposing the legislation's attention, and that he'd received an answer that might be of interest to me.

And it genuinely was.

Democracy works.

It might be true that a leader, particularly a monarch can be corrupt, but it's also true that democracy can be equally corrupt.  For an easy example, look at the social welfare programs and the tax issue.  Democrats have made their entire platform "Vote for me and I'll give you welfare" while republicans have made "vote for me and I'll cut your taxes".  Both are in essence saying that voting for that party will result in goodies from the public treasury -- no matter whether it's good for the country.  The result is a gradual emptying of the government coffers in the form of either giving people welfare or not collecting enough taxes to cover the cost of government. 

The second problem is that while a monarch would have an interest in whether his policies will make the country worse long term, elected officials have no such concern.  The democratic election shortens a government's vision to the length of an election cycle.  If the term is 4 years, then the policies put into place only have to work for that timeframe.  That makes it possible to do all kinds of stupid things that any fool could see will create huge liabilities -- because those liabilities will not be seen for 20 years, long after the people putting those policies into force have retired.  Can't happen as easily in a monarchy -- if the policies make the government likely to collapse, it also makes it likely that our monarch won't be able to pass his country on to his children or that a revolution will replace him.  Thus national survival directly helps him and his children.